Last week, I nearly died. I stopped work at my desk computer and looked around for my laptop to begin the long journey home that is my commute. My laptop was not on the chair where I habitually leave it as part of my daily routine. It was gone….OMG!!!… Six months of work not backed up! Books, papers, projects. I panicked and started running around but it was late at night and there was no one to ask. I was convinced I had been burgled. Lots of people from cleaners to workmen have master keys and I have often arrived at my office to find somebody fixing a light, etc. Three years ago, I lost my lab computers from a burglary that put my research program back a year. I thought it had happened again.
I ran around like a headless chicken trying to search every possible location. Then I called home. Have you checked the car? It was there. I had not even taken it out.
It had been a hard week. Lots of meetings, a new graduate student, projects to discuss and a presentation to the one of my funding agencies. This is what happens when you try to do too much. When you overload the executive functions of your brain, things start to fall apart.
Not so for Mike, the famous headless chicken who lived without a brain for 2 years. There again, birds can get by with just a brain stem. Sometimes I wonder if that is not such a bad thing.
Now that I have recovered my precious laptop, I have spoken to my IT guy who will provide me with an external drive that automatically backs up everytime I come into the office. His name is Mike.
Have you got any good “headless chicken” moments?
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